The bandits set out on their fourth tournament of the 2020 season on lake Oahe launching out of Mobridge, SD. For some of our members in South Dakota it was nice having a fishing destination close to home, for the remainder, they made a great weekend fishing a destination they only get to once a year. For those pre-fishing on Friday, it felt strikingly like a year ago when the bandits had a tournament out of the same launch. Calm, sticky, hot, but the smallmouth were feeding and boy was it ever fun!
Weather forecasted for tournament day showed WINDY but at the morning of launch things appeared to settle down and 8 boats set forth for their “Plan A” locations and tactics. Everyone had a great day fishing, as the day carried on the wind picked up as forecasted, and everyone who had fished the Dakota Waters tournament was having flashbacks of rough waters. In the end everyone made it back safely and brought full bags for weigh in.
Coming in first place was Colton Blomberg and Devin Hoffman with a near 3-pound average coming in at 14.59 pounds. In second place was team Kjer (Elliot, Betty, & Charlie) with a 12.95-pound stringer just edging out our third-place team Paul & Tony Reinbold who brought in 12.42 pounds of bass! Big bass went to Joe, Lori, & Alex Reinbold with a stout 3.7-pound fish!
Spilling the beans uncovered a unanimous style to fish, finesse; majority of the anglers fished jigs, tubes, and ned rigs that imitated crawfish. If it was slow and crawling the bottom the bass were cooperative and wanting to eat all day. Depth did not seem to be a strong indicator of bass location as reports of 1 foot to 15-foot members were catching fish. More important was finding structure to hold bass like rock and wood as the smallmouth seemed to be holding tight to structure, even single boulders.